Lying on apps

[reglu]

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So quite a few people I know who are applying are making stuff up for the secondary questions: death of a friend who never existed, illnesses of a friend that never happened, traumatic experiences that never occurred.

I?m sure some of you here know stuff like this going on. Should I do anything? On all of the apps you have to sign off on content?s authenticity, and risk disqualification if caught deliberately lying. My beef is, on the stuff made up, they may never get caught. I mean what school is gonna ask for a death certificate or medical records documenting serious illnesses? What would you do?

 

[sacrament]

Uh oh. You are going to get flamed like there is no tomorrow.

 

[Amy B]

I can only hope schools can tell when someone is lying or embelishing about something that didn't happen in their life.

I did know someone who said they were going to lie. I don't know if they did because I never spoke to them again. I despise lies.

If people are willing to lie on an application, where will it stop? Will they be willing to lie to a patient, co worker, on a patient's chart.....?

 

[Wilford Brimley]

Originally posted by sacrament
Uh oh. You are going to get flamed like there is no tomorrow.

This person is too unclean that even flames cannot sterilize

 

[Arista.MD]

Don't you have enough stuff to worry about already, application process, interview etc.? Why even worry about this. From the threads that I have read about this ( and they have been quite a few) it is clear that many people inflate they application to look better. But it was also clear that many things from the application come up on the interview and then the person has to explain everything. So why bother. The best thing to do is to concentrate and make your application unique, that's the only way in. Do you think that if you try to tell someone about these people anything is going to change? You will probably only remove 5-10 people from competition, but there are 25000 of us applying the last time I heard. You will lose precious time, argue with people etc. when you could be working on your application and make it stand out. I really don't thing it is worth the trouble.

 

[calebho501]

What I feel (From editing my friend's personal statements) is that applicants often believe that the more tragic the event, the more it'll impress the people reading the essays. The truth is, adcom is not only interested in the event itself, but also the impact on your attitude and thinking. If it's an actual event that influences you a lot, you'll have much to talk about in the essays. If it's a fake event, it's really hard to go beyond the cliches and generality.

That being said, your friends' essays will probably not be as impressive as they hope to be if they can't offer much insight into their self-reflections.

Caleb

Originally posted by reglu
So quite a few people I know who are applying are making stuff up for the secondary questions: death of a friend who never existed, illnesses of a friend that never happened, traumatic experiences that never occurred.

I?m sure some of you here know stuff like this going on. Should I do anything? On all of the apps you have to sign off on content?s authenticity, and risk disqualification if caught deliberately lying. My beef is, on the stuff made up, they may never get caught. I mean what school is gonna ask for a death certificate or medical records documenting serious illnesses? What would you do?

 

[Wilford Brimley]

Why do you guys write so much for such a stupid question? 🙄 🙄

 

[Outer Space]

Originally posted by calebho501
The truth is, adcom is not only interested in the event itself, but also the impact on your attitude and thinking. If it's an actual event that influences you a lot, you'll have much to talk about in the essays. If it's a fake event, it's really hard to go beyond the cliches and generality.

That being said, your friends' essays will probably not be as impressive as they hope to be if they can't offer much insight into their self-reflections.

Caleb

I think secondaries are made to be filled with cliches and generalizations. Honestly, when you have 50 words or 500 characters to describe how you "truly made in impact on someone" or "why you want to go into medicine," it's hard to fill the space with anything but cliches. It really doesn't matter what your experience is. If you're truthful, you will end up iconizing your life to fit the premed stereotype (which is kind of disgusting at first, but you get used to it). If you lie, you just invent a fake event to provoke a fake realization about how you would be perfect for medicine. It's all about selling yourself to medschools. Sometimes lying can save your integrity in a way, because why would you want to sell your friends/volunteering experiences/ and true realizations to the adcom commitee. Personally, if I ever did make an "impact" on someone the LAST thing I would want to do is to commercialize that experience to the adcoms, or even write about it, or even indulge in it, really. And of course in the end you portray your life in the stereotypical terms - that TA job you hated turns into a "very valuable experience that instilled in me love for teaching, a very important quality in a physician" etc etc ad nauseum - unless you are a perfect papercutter premed who would make a perfect papercutter doctor. In that case, I guess you're just lucky.

And to people who say "that's exactly the type of attitude that adcoms DONT want" - what adcoms want are unique life experiences, commitment to service, etc interpeted in a traditional premed style that demonstrates how you would make a good doctor.

 

[Samus Aran]

If you're going to make something up, then make something up. You shouldn't come here looking for justification for your actions, it's not going to happen. Sure people lie on their applications, resumes, etc., all the time, no one can stop it. Just make sure if you're going to begin this process with a lie you end it by making up a pretty damn convincing story to tell your interviewers if and when they ask about your story.

 

[Twiki]

Originally posted by reglu
Should I do anything?

Like what, dude? Are you planning on calling all the programs your lying comrades are applying to and warning them that there may be some embellished personal statements coming through? Perhaps you are thinking of writing a letter to AMCAS with the names of all the perpetrators?

Come on, man. Don't you have anything more important to think about? Nobody is going to get an admission they wouldn't have gotten anyway just because their imaginary Aunt Gertrude died of an incurable brain tumor. Don't worry about what other people are putting on their applications, buddy. Just worry about what's in yours.

 

[sgilani]

people who lie about other people's deaths as an excuse are pathetic and quite frankly too immature to be going to med school.

 

[Wardens]

Should I do anything?

Confront them. Try to bring it up to them in a respectful manner and see if you can reason with them. If nothing else, it'll help calm some of the demons that seem to be bothering you and will hopefully put them on the spot, maybe even make them realize they're wrong. No promises, but they may have not even thought twice about it.

 

[Paws]

I like to think that the adcoms have special BS detectors built into their brains (or noses, so they can smell it a mile away ).

If nothing else, lying is so exhausting and so hard to remember, I can't see how someone can waste so much energy on it. The truth is, alot people who lie on resumes, in relationships ("I'm not married ...") or whatever, do get caught eventually. I have heard alot of stories from people over the years, who were FIRED from jobs sometimes months later because they had lied on their resume when they were hired.

Dude ! it is so not worth it.

And in the interviews, I am sure that the student interviewers are primed to really ask 'casually' about stuff in your application, and how is that going to look if you can't remember, say, how old aunt Gertie was when she died of this famous disease that you wrote so eloquently about.

Just be yourself, imperfections and all ...

 

[VienneseWaltz]

I don't think the OP was asking if he should do the same (lie), but rather, whether he should do anything to expose the liars. There's nothing you can do to expose the liars that won't make YOU look bad to adcoms, so you might as well try not to think about it. 🙄

 

[calebho501]

Originally posted by Outer Space
I think secondaries are made to be filled with cliches and generalizations.

It's true that even if you're writing about a real event, you can pad it with cliches and generalizations. However, some people are indeed able to go beyond those, and this usually happens when you're not imagining the event.

I won't argue with you anymore on this...